Sunday's sermon followed in the sequence of our purpose here on earth.
Week 1: First purpose – Worship: we were made to love God, and we do that by giving him our attention, and our affections, and our actions.
Week 2: Second Purpose – Fellowship: learning to love God’s family; for each of us to make a commitment to a local church body, and then begin to share our lives, our resources, our homes, our struggles, our burdens, our joys and our sorrows with one another.
Week 3: Last week, third purpose: Discipleship - to become like Christ. God’s goal right now, is to transform you; to take you from wherever you are, and bring you through a lifelong process of change that will result in you becoming more and more like Jesus Christ.
“We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”. You were made to make a contribution, not just to consume. And what matters is not how long you live, but how you live. We’re all meant to give something back. We’re commanded to serve God back.
This is called “ministry”. The word is often misunderstood. Ministry simply means using my shape to help somebody else in the name of God. This means every believer is a minister. Now, not every believer is a pastor, but every believer is a minister Any time you use your talents, your abilities, your background, your experiences to help somebody else, you know what that’s called? Ministering. And you know what you are? You’re a minister.
Whenever God gives us an assignment to do something, He never gives it to us without equipping us first.
God uses five things to shape you: Spiritual gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality, and Experiences.
1. Spiritual Gifts: These are gifts given and chosen by God to each Christian, for the purpose of benefiting others.
2. Heart - the bundle of hope, motivation, dreams, desires - the source of our motivation. What do we like to do? Do it for God's glory!
3. Abilities - These are our natural talents and gifts. They should be used to minster to others.
4. Personality: each of us are a unique creation, specially designed by God. This affects how and where we use our gifts and abilities.
5. Experiences - God uses all of our experiences (good and bad) to mold us and equip us to minister to others. No experience, trial, problem is wasted, but is used for preparation.
Your SHAPE (spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, experiences) determines your ministry, but your attitude determines your maturity. You want to know what God wants you to do with your life? Look at your spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences. But your attitude, your servant heart, determines your maturity.
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